


Two Men in a Sort of a Boat

by fitofpique



Category: British Comedy RPF
Genre: Incompetence, M/M, Pining, Reckless use of power tools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-09 14:02:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/775030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitofpique/pseuds/fitofpique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Just to be perfectly clear, they asked who you wanted to build and race a boat with and you chose me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Men in a Sort of a Boat

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Britcom Fic Challenge for the prompt "in the same boat." Thanks to disarm_d for cheerleading!

_23 hours, 51 minutes_

"What," Charlie paused for emphasis, "the fuck is this?"

David looked up from the piles of plywood and 2x4s and tins of epoxy and assorted tools in front of him and squinted across the room at the metal whatsit Charlie was holding up. "It's a C-clamp," he said, and went back to examining their building supplies.

"How the hell do you know that?" Charlie asked, not even bothering to hide his disbelief.

David looked up again, his expression wavering between amusement and exasperation. "I did some reading," he replied slowly, like Charlie was a bit of an idiot, "on how to build boats."

Charlie was a bit of an idiot, because that had never occurred to him. "Oh. Right," he said, "I should have thought of that."

David smiled and rolled his eyes. "I also read Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels, but I think building a corvette might be slightly out of scope given the time we've got," he said, and turned his attention to pulling a jigsaw out of its box.

Charlie stroked his beard and gave into the temptation to sneak a quick look at David's arse while he had his back turned. "I'm lucky they paired us up then."

"They didn't," David said, chucking a bit of Styrofoam aside and setting the saw gingerly on the worktable. "They asked who I wanted ..." He trailed off, ducking under the table to plug in the saw.

Charlie refused to be pleased and flattered. "They asked … and you said me?"

David stood up and dusted off his hands. "Yes?"

"Really? Just to be perfectly clear, they asked who you wanted to build and race a boat with and you chose me?" Charlie asked again.

"Yes, I did," David said, looking at him curiously. "Did you want to be paired up with someone else? David Walliams maybe?"

"Christ, no," Charlie said, "although at least I know he can swim, if it comes to it."

"I can swim," David said, folding his arms across his chest. He was starting to look cross.

"That … that's not the point, David!" Charlie shouted. "I thought you were supposed to be smart. But given a choice of who you wanted to spend 24 hours locked in a room building a boat with, you picked me? I have no idea how to build a fucking boat! I have no idea how to build anything! I'm terrible at taking direction or following instructions, I always drill holes millimetres away from where they should go, and I'm genuinely shit under pressure! And don't get me started about my claustrophobia and fear of failure! How am I supposed to help you sail the fucking thing?"

"Charlie," David said. Charlie could tell he was trying to scold him, but his mouth was curling up into a grin. "You're being a bit hard on yourself. You're manly–"

Charlie shook his head. "Yeah, I’m a boilerhouse of pure masculine energy."

"–and relatively competent. We'll do fine."

"That's very kind of you to say, David, but you're mad. This will end in tears."

David laughed. "Don't worry," he said, "it'll make cracking good telly either way." He winked exaggeratedly at the camera in the corner of the room and then turned and smiled at Charlie. It was the kind of smile that said, "I'm terribly clever and awfully pleased with myself." 

It was also the kind of smile that made Charlie wanted to smack him quite hard or, alternatively, shag him into next week. Of course, he could do neither with the two of them locked in a room under constant video surveillance for the next 24 hours. Not that their other, off-camera interactions were rife with shagging or smacking, but Charlie often – all right, always – wished they were. And it was exactly that sort of thinking that had got him into this mess in the first place.

"Oh, it'll be absolutely riveting," he said, picking up a box of nails and giving it a half-hearted shake. "I'm sure everyone will take genuine pleasure in watching me trying to build a boat with a wrench and some papier-mâché and then floundering around in the filthy Thames while it dissolves and inevitably sinks and I contract cholera and die horribly. For the kids."

"That's the spirit," David said. "All for a good cause."

Charlie sighed. "Seriously though, I will be rubbish at this." He felt like he should apologise in advance for the sort of person he was, the myriad ways in which he would likely fuck this up. He suddenly felt very morose about the whole thing. He looked over his shoulder at the camera in the corner and wondered if he could convince whoever ended up editing the show to cut out the bits where he seemed particularly whiny and neurotic.

David sat down on the floor facing him. "It's going to be perfectly fine, Charlie. And if it all goes horribly wrong, I'll let you take the blame. If it will make you feel better."

Charlie pretended to think about it for a second, then nodded glumly. "Seems fair.

_21 hours, 6 minutes_

Charlie snapped the goggles down over his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. He powered the saw on cautiously and then spent a few seconds enjoying the noise and vibration and even the oily tool smell, which was somehow nostalgic even though he'd never used a power saw in his life. He switched it off and used the ruler to measure the bit of wood David had given him. He checked the measurement several times just to be sure and then made a confident pencil tick where he was going to cut.

Ha! There was really nothing to this boat building lark. He adjusted his goggles, turned the saw on again, and zipped it through the wood. The leftover bit clattered to the floor, and Charlie stared down at his still-visible pencil mark on the plank. Hmm. He was going to need to shave another little bit off. He positioned the saw carefully and biffed it through again. He peeled off his goggles and examined his handiwork. The bit with the line was on the floor now, along with another centimetre or two that was meant to be on the bit that was supposed to fit in the boat. His head started to throb.

"How's it going over there?" David asked from across the room where he was competently bolting together the three planks that would make up the frame of their little skiff.

"Oh, good," Charlie said. "Really good."

_20 hours, 34 minutes_

It was the fourth time he'd tried to cut the centre thwart and the fourth time it had been too _fucking_ short. He picked up the length of plank and hit the wall with it hard. It was surprisingly satisfying, so he did it a few more time. And then a few more for good measure.

David pushed his goggles up onto the top of his head. "I feel like I'm watching a poignant human drama unfold before my eyes."

Charlie gave him the finger and continued bashing the plank, hitting the floor and the worktable legs for variety until his hands started to hurt and he gave up.

"What's enrollment like at the Brooker School of Percussive Construction?" David asked.

Charlie threw the plank into the pile of discarded wood and looked around for something else to distract him from the desire to kiss David's smart fucking mouth. Being this close for this long, Charlie could hardly breathe with wanting him. Was there no end to life's cruelties, he wondered.

_17 hours, 18 minutes_

"What are these bits?" Charlie asked. He held the board steady as David whizzed the saw through with a good deal more accuracy than he had thus far been able to manage.

"Uh, bottom boards?" David offered.

"Do you even know or are you just making stuff up now?"

"I'm guessing," he admitted, steadying the saw with one hand and pushing the sleeve of his shirt up to his elbow with the other, "but they're boards. And they go in the bottom. So ... there's that."

Charlie covertly admired David's profile, the curve of his lip, the smudge of dust on his cheek. He resisted the temptation to touch him for about a quarter of a second and then reached out and swept his fingers lightly across his David's cheekbone.

David looked at him questioningly.

"Sawdust," Charlie said. "I got it."

_15 hours, 3 minutes_

"I'm sorry about your finger," David said, when the First Aid team finally left.

"It's not that serious," Charlie said, flipping the cold pack over and slouching deeper into the settee. "Just a few stitches."

"Still. I feel terrible," David said. "I should have been more careful. I'll make it up to you."

Charlie didn't dare think too deeply about how David might do that when they still had another 10 hours cloistered together. "I'm just glad we're helping Comic Relief by making a complete fucking spectacle of ourselves and our incompetence and not by building wells or houses or something."

David laughed and sat down beside him. "God forbid."

_12 hours, 17 minutes_

"I'm absolutely certain that this stuff's toxic," Charlie said, balancing his roller in the tray and pressing the lid back onto the tin so he could read the blurb on the back. "We're supposed to be wearing masks while using this! Where are our masks, David?"

"I like the way you say my name," David said, the words running together drunkenly. He dropped his paint brush back in the tin and sat down on the floor quite quickly.

"What?" Charlie asked, rifling through the building materials. "How do I say it?"

"With ... with your mouth," David said, looking at him with the excessive focus of the chemically altered. 

"David!" Charlie yelped.

David beamed up at him. "Yes! Like that!"

Charlie groaned. "You're as high as a fucking kite, David!"

"You really seem to relish saying it. And you say it a lot." David paused and frowned, paling visibly. "I don't feel very well, Charlie." 

"No, really? Shit, we've got to get you outside," Charlie said, slipping his hands under David's arms and hauling him to his feet. "I can't believe the wankers at the BBC cheaped out on the supplies. You twats have poisoned one of England's most beloved comedians," he shouted over his shoulder at the camera as he hustled David out of the room.

_8 hours, 55 minutes_

"I think we've seen quite enough of the First Aid team for the day," David said.

"I could not agree more," Charlie said, more relieved than he could say that David had stopped puking and rambling nonsense.

"Can you imagine the montage they'll put together of us building this fucking thing? I wonder if they'll edit out all the bleeding and vomiting?"

"I expect they'll just speed up the film and add a light-hearted soundtrack, maybe show it in black and white. That makes everything look zany and harmless." Charlie set down his roller and straightened up, pressing his hands into the small of his back and sighing with satisfaction when it cracked noisily. He breathed in the fresh, damp air, enjoying respiration substantially more than he had in recent memory. Painting and sealing the boat outside had been a brilliant idea, if he said so himself.

"Do you think it will dry in time?" David tipped the rest of the epoxy back into the tin and wiped his hands on a towel.

"I'm certain it won't," Charlie said, "but I can't really bring myself to care anymore."

David frowned at him.

"I'm not a machine, David! Or if I am, I'm a broken one." He lowered himself gingerly to the ground. "Are we done? Old man needs a lie down."

"We still need to name her," David said, sitting down beside him, just a bit too close. Not nearly close enough.

"Oh, god. _The Seaward_?" Charlie suggested.

David smiled. "The _Lead Balloon_? Or the _Hook, Line, and Sinker_?"

"That's tempting fate, that is." Charlie grinned. "The _Maid of Plywood_?"

"Ha! The _Two Men in a Sort of a Boat_?"

Charlie cackled and rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "What about, _Rudder? I Hardly Know Her_!"

David threw his head back and laughed uproariously, the way he only very rarely did, and Charlie leaned into him and laughed too.

_6 hours, 13 minutes_

"They look sort of like oars, I think?" Charlie offered, after David had severely depleted their remaining supply of wood with multiple attempts and the air was blue around them from all the mother-fucking profanity. "Close enough anyway."

"I give up," David groaned, staggering across the room and collapsing onto the settee. "Let's sleep for a few hours and see if we can get through the rest of this ordeal without losing any limbs or drowning." He leaned back and closed his eyes and then patted the cushion beside him. "C'mon, Charlie."

Who was Charlie to refuse that kind of offer? He sat down on the sofa and let himself look at David for a long moment. The day's stubble on his flushed cheeks. The dusty mess of his hair. His haughty-looking mouth. He forgot to hide how he felt – how enormously smitten he was, how consumed with wretched longing – so it was all there on his face when David suddenly opened his eyes.

"Fuck," David said, with an expression of comical surprise, and then he surged up and kissed Charlie hard on the mouth. And then kissed him again.

"What," Charlie said, in between heated kisses. "I mean ... what?"

David pushed him away minutely. "Have you been pining long?" he asked. He licked his lips, glanced at Charlie’s mouth.

Charlie took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to answer that question. Nothing sprang to mind, so he leaned in and kissed David again, deep and wet and intent. "I haven't been _pining_ ," he muttered against David's mouth. "Can you imagine anything more pathetic?"

David pulled back again and gave him a look. A melting sort of look.

Charlie rolled his eyes and glanced down at his hands gripping David's thighs. "For a bit," he admitted. David looked at him closely, and Charlie felt himself going scarlet under the scrutiny. 

"We're idiots," David said, sighing and tightening his hold on Charlie's shoulders.

Charlie let out a little huff of surprise. "Both of us?" he asked skeptically.

"I can't speak for you, I suppose, but apparently I've been an absolute moron," David said, staring at Charlie unflinchingly, and then his hands weren't gripping Charlie's shoulders so much as pushing at them. Charlie let himself recline, let David arrange him on the couch, and spread his thighs helpfully so David could kneel between them.

"I'm sure I've been far, far stupider than you," Charlie offered, because it seemed like a suitably supportive thing to say in the situation, which was not one that he'd been in before, so it was a shot in the dark really.

"We're both very damaged people," David said agreeably. "All right?" he asked, before he started unbuttoning Charlie's shirt. 

"Knock yourself out," Charlie said.

"That's just about the only stupid thing I haven't done today, but I don't think I will, thank you," David said. "I want to be awake for this." He leaned in and planted a hot kiss in the centre of Charlie's chest and then unzipped his jeans and started working them down his hips.

That's when Charlie remembered the camera.

_5 minutes after the race_

Charlie had a picture someone took of them right after they won. He and David were soaked to the skin, arms around each other's shoulders, grinning like a pair idiots in the foreground, and the transom of their little skiff, with the _HMS Surprise_ painted on it in quite neat lettering, was just visible behind them.


End file.
